| OCR Text |
Show ' Fit. CEO1 SHIP' WIDTH CANARIES'. Remarkable. Experience, at Unen H. . Tropical, Storm. It happened In the night, and; according ac-cording to tbe yarn spun by Capt. Sandbcrg of the Panama liner City of Para, It must have been a night of terror. The ship was midway between Aca-Jiltla Aca-Jiltla nnd Sun Josh de Guatemala, which Is a latitude- lu, which the tin-' tin-' usual Is expected. The time was lie- tween one and two o'clock la the I morning nnd It wus very dnrk. Suddenly Sud-denly an electric storm of great feroc-I feroc-I Ity came up from a revolutionary ro-public ro-public on the starboard quarter, ac- eompanled hy wntorsponts, St. Elmo's fire, and a grent flock of canary blrda. I Kveryono knows that St. Elmo's fire : and waterspouts are common off tho coast of Acajittla, but the canary birds ! are a novnlty. At the first stroke the lightning blew out the fuse In the ship's dynnmo and she became ns dark as on abandoned trolley cnr. Then the St. Elmo's fire lit on the fore-topmast and split tho gilt I hall nt the top of tbe topmast exactly Into two hemispheres. One of these fell Into the wnler; tho other struck the bridge nnd almost hit Second Officer Offi-cer Heckcrt. Third Ofllcer glial, who had been off I watch below, rnn on deck. All the pas. 1 sengers followed Ciinl to tho dock, nnd , the captain says tjiat the passengers j thought the end of the world nad , come. The slorm was bad enough, but It wna the birds thnl flew In the faces of the startled passnngdrs that caused , Indescribable terror. It lasted for nn hour, and Itl tli morning, when the storm hud passed , and the sun rose, there on the decks, covering the awnings and almost filling fill-ing the boats lashed on tho upper I deck, were thousands of dead and dying dy-ing canary birds. Capt. Sandberg says there were thousands of them. Some of them bail blundered Into the stato-rooms stato-rooms In the darkness after the electric elec-tric lights were out. So the City of Pnrn came Bafely through the storm when il rained canary birds, all save the gilt ball at the top of the foretopmnst, half of which was lost overboard. San Francisco Fran-cisco Chronicle. |
